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Friday, 29 January 2016

The
Enfield Poltergeist, made famous by Guy Lyon Playfair’s classic book This House is Haunted and recently the
subject of a Sky television series, The
Enfield Haunting, is back in the news with the forthcoming release of a
major feature film, The Conjuring 2 (the
title has changed along the way from The
Conjuring 2: Enfield Poltergeist).Unlike This House is Haunted and
The Enfield Haunting, The Conjuring 2 does not focus on the
investigation of the case conducted by the Society for Psychical Research’s
Playfair and Maurice Grosse, but on the American demonologists Ed and Lorraine
Warren.There has been some confusion
about the extent of the Warrens’ involvement at Enfield, which one might assume
was considerable given that a feature film has been based on it.Yet Playfair recently went on record in an interview
on ‘Darkness Radio’ to say that the Warrens perhaps visited the house in
Enfield once, when Ed talked mostly about making money from the case for
Playfair, an attitude which did not impress him.

So
what was the Warrens’ involvement at
Enfield? Some indication can be gained
from Grosse’s papers, held by the Society for Psychical Research. Fortunately, Playfair generally kept Grosse
informed of activities he was undertaking, so while the available papers are
Grosse’s, they do touch on Playfair as well, providing a fairly reliable
indication of the situation as far as the two primary investigators are
concerned.

The
first surprise is how long it took for the Warrens to get in touch. Bearing in mind the events began in August
1977, Lorraine Warren does not appear on the scene until 8 May 1978. She handwrote a letter to Grosse on Delta
Airlines notepaper in which she said that although she had not been to Enfield,
she had been kept informed of developments by a mutual friend, Charles Moses of
Psychic Research Associates in California, who had visited the house. She had planned to fly over to take a look
for herself and see what ‘help’ she could give.
For a variety of reasons she had not been able to make the trip, but she
and Ed expected to be in England in June, when they hoped to meet Maurice, and
through him become acquainted with the ‘Enfield family’ (suggesting that at
this point she didn’t know their real names)
or any other current cases they could ‘help’ with. Then suddenly the letter lurches in tone: ‘Mr
Grosse are you aware of Ed’s specialized work in the area of “demonology”? What are your feelings concerning that
particular field? Do you feel there may
be some strong [evidence?] for it in the Enfield case?’ She signs off after assuring Grosse they and
he ‘have mutual goals’, and once more saying how they would be able to ‘help’ Grosse.

It
would seem Grosse was not fooled by this approach. He replied politely on 18 May 1978 saying he
was sorry Lorraine had not been able to make the trip earlier but looked
forward to meeting her and Ed when they were able to do so. He noted that the case was significant in
terms of the variety of phenomena, length of occurrence, and the depth of the
investigation (which may have been his way of establishing his primacy in it). He was probably bemused by the reference to
demonology, merely acknowledging he had ‘quite an open mind on the subject’
though he had not seen any ‘signs of “evil forces” at work’. In fact he concludes that he has not yet found
a theory to account satisfactorily for the variety of the phenomena.

The
Warrens did indeed turn up at the house the following month because Grosse
wrote a report, dated 4 July 1978, which he sent to the SPR’s secretary. The Warrens had visited the house on 16 June
with a colleague, and in Grosse’s presence interviewed Peggy, Janet and
Margaret, and Peggy’s brother John Burcombe.
According to Grosse, the visitors said they were impressed with the
evidence. That evening Grosse and
members of the Hodgson family participated in a transatlantic telephone discussion
from John Burcombe’s house for an unspecified programme ‘produced by a member
of President Carter’s Press Corps’. Lorraine
Warren told Grosse later that the programme had been well received. After the broadcast Mrs Warren went into the
Hodgsons’ house and entered a trance state in which she received impressions
Mrs Hodgson and Grosse thought related closely to Mrs Hodgson’s ex-husband,
though as far as Mrs Hodgson and Grosse were aware, Lorraine Warren had no
personal knowledge of Mr Hodgson (the actual impressions were not included in
the report). Mr Warren and the American colleague
were left in the house on their own and carried out a ritual they did not
describe to Grosse, though they told him it had had no effect. The three visitors left just after midnight
and rang Grosse on 27 June, on their way back to the USA. They told Grosse there had been so much
interest in the broadcast that a television broadcast was possible. Grosse concludes his report: ‘I personally
was very impressed with our visitors’ knowledge of the occult and the manner in
which they conducted their limited investigation.’ The reference to ‘limited investigation’ is a
sting in the tail, and referring to the occult is possibly a covert way of
saying he disagreed with their viewpoint.

So
that is one day the Warrens spent at the house.
They did come back though, as indicated in a letter, dated 12 July 1980
and obviously sanctioned by the Warrens, sent by Gerald Brittle to the
Executive Editor at Souvenir Press, which was in the process of preparing
Playfair’s This House is Haunted for
publication. Brittle was writing his own
book, TheDemonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren,
published the same year. His letter
gives further dates when the Warrens were allegedly present in the house. It is possible, if surprising, that Playfair
and Grosse were unaware of this visit at the time and it was privately arranged
with the Hodgsons. According to Brittle,
the Warrens spent 6-9 August 1979 in the house, but the letter is mainly
concerned with the content of This House
is Haunted, the manuscript of which Brittle had seen. He said the Warrens had investigated Enfield
‘at the same time’ as Playfair and Grosse (perhaps to imply the Warrens’ one
was as extensive, though it clearly was not), hence he had included it in his
own book.

Brittle
says that during their visit the Warrens and two colleagues had experienced
‘spirit phenomena’; had made 13 hours of audio recordings featuring the
‘entities’ in the house; had photographed levitations of objects, the
appearance of excrement, and the ‘spontaneous’ removal of wallpaper in the
kitchen; witnessed the materialisation of rocks and the dematerialisation of a
bottle of holy water; and interviewed the family. He adds: ‘On 6 Aug 79, the Warrens also made
a live radio broadcast (via telephone) from the home of Mr. Burcombe (the
Hodgson’s nearby relative) wherein it is clearly asserted that activity is
taking place at the time of the broadcast.’ It is not clear whether he is confusing the
Warrens’ visit on 16 June 1978, when a live radio interview was conducted by
telephone from the Burcombe house (as noted in Grosse’s report of 4 July 1978),
or whether there was a second broadcast.

However
, in addition to outlining the Warrens’s findings, Brittle attempts to claim
some sort of priority for the Warrens’ short investigation; he claims in his
letter that there were ‘pertinent discrepancies of fact’ between the two books
which could cause Playfair problems. One
was that the case had not come to an end in April 1979, as Playfair’s book
indicated (obviously that would have made the phenomena the Warrens had said
they experienced there the following August problematic), hence Playfair’s
account was ‘at variance with the real facts.’
Further, while Grosse and Playfair talk about poltergeists, what the
Hodgsons were experiencing was ‘an inhuman spirit’ (i.e. a demon), and it was
still around because Playfair and Grosse had not ‘permitted’ an exorcism,
despite having been told ‘on numerous occasions’ that this was necessary,
though Mrs Hodgson had now asked Ed Warren to arrange one.

There
were more discrepancies Brittle continues, but these were the major ones, and
any comparison of the two books, he suggests, would show Playfair’s work in an
unfavourable light. What Brittle seemed
to find particularly galling was that the Warrens were not referred to at all
in This House is Haunted, and he even
claims its title was taken from something said by one of the spirits Mr Warren
recorded in August 1979: ‘This house is haunted. Kill the ghosties.’ So, bearing in mind the manifest deficiencies
of This House is Haunted when
compared to The Demonologist, what
could Playfair do to go some way to rectify this unfortunate state of
affairs? Brittle has a suggestion: perhaps
an epilogue could be appended to future editions ‘which would reflect the
actual status’ of the activity, in effect acknowledging that the Warrens’
assessment had priority over Grosse and Playfair’s. Brittle is confident the Warrens would allow
their names to be used for such a purpose.
He concludes by offering helpful remarks on how Playfair might improve
the ending of his book by examining its references to Tourette’s syndrome, a
connection that, Brittle argues, would be demolished by ‘academic theologians’
in the United States and possibly lead the Hodgsons to sue Playfair for ‘slander’
(presumably he meant libel). One has to
admire Brittle’s chutzpah (Tourette’s
stayed in).

Playfair
and Grosse, to whom the letter had been forwarded, both replied in dismissive
terms, Playfair on 22 July 1980 and Grosse two days later. The former pointed out that his book’s
subtitle: ‘An investigation of the Enfield poltergeist’, indicated that it was
about Grosse’s investigation, not the Warrens’ (incidentally I notice that by
the 2007 edition of his book the subtitle had changed to ‘The investigation into the Enfield poltergeist’, so perhaps
Playfair was paying attention to the Warrens after all, but not in the way they
would have preferred). Playfair adds
that as the book had gone to the publishers well before August 1979, it would
hardly have been possible to incorporate the Warren’s visit in that month. As to the case having ended, he did not state
so categorically, only it might be over and the poltergeist seemed to have gone,
both true statements. The exorcism? ‘When you have had time to read the book’
(ouch) Brittle would see that Mrs Hodgson had specifically said she did not want
one. The title? It was in a remark made by Mrs Hodgson, again
reported in the book. Finally Playfair
confirms he met Ed Warren only once at Enfield, and while he found him
‘amiable’, he adds, as he reiterated in the recent interview he gave discussing
The Conjuring 2, that Ed spent most
of it talking about money.

Grosse
was similarly brief, claiming priority as a member of the SPR to be the lead
investigator in a difficult case occupying ‘many months’. Sensibly he noted that definitive statements
about the cause of the phenomena could not be made with confidence as there was
still no consensus on the causes of poltergeists. Ed Warren’s conclusion was therefore only his
opinion. Grosse himself was not ‘privy’
to any phenomena as described in Brittle’s letter in August 1979, so did not
feel able to comment. He did say that he
had asked John Burcombe about the broadcast from his house, and Mr Burcombe had
told him that, to the best of his recollection, no ‘activity’ had occurred
during it, contrary to the assertion in Brittle’s letter. Brittle responded on 5 August 1980. He had already replied to Playfair, he said,
but unfortunately this letter is not among Grosse’s papers. All he had to add to Grosse was that he was
not impressed by the ‘policy statements’ he had received, obviously giving up as
a bad job his efforts to piggyback the Warrens on This House is Haunted. He
noted that he had learned from multiple sources, not only the Warrens but also
exorcists, ‘professors in the Catholic church’, and witnesses themselves, that
a poltergeist is often actually ‘a demonic spirit entity’. This appears to end Mr Brittle’s engagement
with Playfair and Grosse.

Putting
together Grosse’s report and Brittle’s letter, it looks like the Warrens were
present in the Hodgson’s house for a maximum of four days, assuming Brittle’s
dates are correct; it is unlikely to have been more because the Warrens would
have told Brittle of any extra visits.
That brevity is in marked contrast to the lengthy investigation
conducted by Grosse and Playfair, and one can understand that the pair might
have felt patronised, and insulted (though too gentlemanly to say so explicitly)
that the Warrens had swanned in for a few days and crudely attempted to impose
an interpretation fitting their pet perspective, one at variance with Grosse
and Playfair’s experiences, while maintaining (if Brittle’s original letter
reflected their views) that their analysis rendered This House is Haunted ‘incorrect to some degree’, as Brittle condescendingly
put it.

Needless
to say the suggested epilogue was not appended to any edition of This House is Haunted and no reference
to the Warrens’ visits was included either.
Playfair did however take on board Brittle’s comments about Tourette’s,
though not naming him, in the Afterword to the 2007 edition. He noted that ‘some critics thought I jumped
to a premature conclusion when I suggested that the “poltergeist syndrome” was
a rare variety of Tourette’s syndrome…’ before going on to discuss similarities
and differences between the two. The
Warrens are not mentioned at all, and The
Demonologist is not in the reading list, despite it containing a chapter on
Enfield, ‘The Enfield Voices’.

Back
to The Conjuring 2. Playfair’s Darkness Radio interview was the
subject of an article by Greg Newkirk on the Week in Weird website (‘Conjuring the Truth: Enfield Poltergeist
Investigator Says Ed and Lorraine Warren Never Investigated Case’, 7 January
2016) in which he considers the issue of why a Conjuring sequel would use Enfield as its basis when the Warrens’ contribution
to it was minimal. The reason, he
concludes, is because the Warrens probably did not own the media rights to many
of their own cases, having sold them; hence Warner Bros, the studio that made The Conjuring, had to mine Brittle’s
book, in which Enfield briefly appears (as does the case forming the basis of
the Conjuring spin-off Anabelle). The legal situation is extremely complex, but
it does shed some light on why the forthcoming film chose Enfield, a case associated
with the SPR rather than the Warrens, and also hints that perhaps there might
not be too much life left in the franchise if the producers have to scrape the
bottom of the barrel ever further to claim they are using ‘real life’
material. At least the Hodgson family
should gain financially from the project, even if they struggle to recognise
its content.

What
little information there is about The
Conjuring 2 is worth a brief examination.
The trailer begins with a title: ‘Enfield, London, 1977’, and a
voiceover with Lorraine asking Janet a series of leading questions that will
have serious researchers cringing in disbelief.
Obviously the 1977 date is wrong because the Warrens did not visit the
house until June 1978. Pushing the date
back implies the Warrens’ involvement covered the same sort of period as Grosse
and Playfair’s, but this is incorrect (we’ll leave aside the fact that the
trailer’s opening in the garden is autumnal, with leaves everywhere, and the
Warrens visited in June and August). The
bulk of the trailer, apparently filmed through dirty pond water, has the Janet
actor wearing a red nightie with white piping, as made famous by Graham
Morris’s photographs, but the pop posters so prominent in the Enfield photographs
have been replaced by a large number of crosses dotted around the walls. These rotate upside down after ‘Janet’ finds
herself pinned to the ceiling, and to cap it all she is menaced by a
supernatural being that seems to have been borrowed from the first Conjuring. A title at the end proclaims ‘The next true
story from the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren’ but if Lorraine Warren has
documentary evidence to support such outlandish occurrences it should be
produced, along with signed witness statements of the sort Playfair obtained at
Enfield to demonstrate that they agreed with the content of This House is Haunted.

Just
as Playfair does not mention the Warrens in This
House is Haunted Brittle does not mention Playfair and Grosse by name in The Demonologist, but SPR researchers have
been cast in The Conjuring 2: Grosse and
Anita Gregory (both of whom are now dead). Gregory also had a walk-on role in The Enfield Haunting as an incredulous sceptic,
so perhaps watching that programme was part of James Wan’s homework before he
directed the Conjuring sequel. Gregory was highly critical of the Enfield
case, attributing the phenomena to the acts of naughty children, so presumably
she will stand in TheConjuring 2 for those ridiculous
parapsychologists who still haven’t learned the lesson from Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist that an attempt to formulate
a mundane explanation for obviously demonic activity is stupid and will end
badly. Playfair (alive) isn’t in the Conjuring 2 cast list. At least there will be some nod to Grosse’s
investigation in the film, but it will be interesting to see how he is depicted
in relation to the Warrens. James Wan
said of The Conjuring 2: ‘The
haunting that afflicted the Hodgson family is probably one of the most
documented paranormal cases in the world.’
That’s true – just not documented very much by the Warrens. The film is due out this summer (pushed back
from a 2015 release).

Monday, 4 January 2016

In March 2010 I was in Cambridge University Library
examining a trio of albums containing a large quantity of spirit photographs
taken by Ada Deane, dated 1920-23.These
albums are part of the archives of the Society for Psychical Research and
contain photographs in which sitters are shown with alleged spirit extras.While leafing through the first album I was
struck by one subject who reminded me of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein.In the drapery above the
sitter’s head can be seen a spirit face.Most of the sitters in the albums are ordinary members of the public,
though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does make an appearance, so it seemed odd that
someone like Wittgenstein would have consented to have his picture taken in
such circumstances.

There were some items in favour of this being
Wittgenstein, but more against.
Wittgenstein was born in 1889 so would have been about the right age
(c31-34). The hairstyles were similar,
and the Deane subject’s jacket possibly had a continental look. He was wearing a jumper, and while I have not
found a photograph of Wittgenstein so attired, he did dress casually, without a
tie; a jumper is the sort of bohemian garment he might have worn. Above all the mystery man does not look like
a typical Deane sitter and stands out.

The mystery sitter in Ada Deane's album

Against this, Wittgenstein lived in Austria after the
First World War until 1929, when he moved to Cambridge. The hairstyle is ordinary
enough to make it less than compelling evidence.Most significantly of all, would he have sat
for Deane? I asked a friend at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie
und Psychohygiene in Freiburg for his opinion and he was sceptical that
Wittgenstein could have even met Deane, on the grounds that Wittgenstein would
have loathed the idea of spirit photography. But we don't know the
circumstances in which it was taken. One
does not need a Spiritualist motivation to sit for a spirit photograph, it may
be regarded as an intriguing experience: Wittgenstein could have decided to try
the process from a sense of adventure, or perhaps he had suffered some trauma
during the war and thought that it might have therapeutic benefit.

The following year the University of Cambridge,
supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, mounted a small exhibition on
Wittgenstein and Photography in its Photographic
and Illustration Services to mark the 60th anniversary of his death (later
shown at the London School of Economics).
The display included, as well as portraits of him, an exploration of his
wider involvement in photography and the connections to his philosophy. Before I visited it I thought I would see if
others saw any resemblance between Wittgenstein and the man in Deane’s
photograph. I had taken a handheld copy and
put a cropped version (minus the spirit extra) on Facebook, asking simply if
anybody recognised the individual. Only
one person responded (the writer Anthony Peake), and he said he thought it bore
a resemblance to Wittgenstein. The
cropped version is at the top of this article.

I had hoped that I would see a portrait of
Wittgenstein at the Cambridge University exhibition from the same period as
Deane’s photographs to help me decide either way, but unfortunately there was
nothing dated about 1923. One from 1930,
when he was a Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, bore a vague resemblance,
and was probably what sprang to mind when I first saw the Deane album. He is wearing a plain jacket, though of a
different style, and while his eyes look more recessed and his eyebrows darker
than the Deane sitter, differences in illumination could conceivably account
for such discrepancies. A photograph
included in the catalogue from 1920 certainly does not resemble hers, but it is
worth bearing in mind that he seems to have aged rather fast over the decade so
it is not impossible that he could have looked so much older three years later.

Wittgenstein in 1930

As the exhibition’s title suggests, Wittgenstein was fascinated
by the medium, both as a practitioner and theoretician.One project included in the show was the
construction of a composite photograph made some time during the 1920s,
inspired by the work of Francis Galton, which blended his own features with
those of his three sisters.Despite the
firm opinion of my friend at IGPP in Freiburg, it felt entirely possible that
someone interested in the way images can be manipulated to make a new reality
might also be interested in how they can represent the unseen in spirit
photographs.

Wittgenstein in 1920

Leaving aside comparisons between the Deane photograph
and portraits of Wittgenstein taken at various times, the key question was
whether he was actually in England during the period covered by the albums. An email to the Cambridge Wittgenstein
Archive in January 2016 appeared to lay the matter to rest. After the First World War ended he travelled
outside Austria only twice before 1929. In
1921 he went to Norway, and during the summer of 1925 he visited John Maynard Keynes
in Sussex and his friend William Eccles in Manchester. He finally moved to Cambridge in January 1929. So he was outside England entirely between
1920 and 1923. It is possible that there
was an undocumented trip between those dates, which seems most unlikely, or
that the date in the Deane albums is incorrect and they include photographs
taken after 1923, and Wittgenstein dropped into Deane’s studio in London en route to Sussex or Manchester. Either suggestion feels like clutching at
straws.

To conclude, my suspicion is that while I really do
wish I had stumbled across a hitherto unknown photograph of Wittgenstein
sitting in Ada Deane’s studio, the answer to the question posed in the title is
‘probably not’ as the weight of the evidence is strongly against the
possibility. But you never know, an
authenticated picture of Wittgenstein might turn up in which he looks
unambiguously the same as the Deane sitter, though the puzzle would still
remain when he did it, and why he was there.

Acknowledgement:
I would like to thank the Wittgenstein Archive in Cambridge for the
speedy response to my enquiry asking about his travels outside Austria between
1918 and 1929.

Overview

Over the last few years I have written a large number of pieces, mainly reviews on aspects of the paranormal and of visual culture, but many are no longer available. This blog format is a convenient way of putting my bibliography online and adding some of the old items, plus the occasional new one.

A Note on Titles of Publications

The British and Irish Skeptic is now The Skeptic

The Newsletter of the Society for Psychical Research became The Psi Researcher and then The Paranormal Review

Many of the later items are available online, notably those written for nthposition and the SPR website. Those for The Psi Researcher, Paranormal Review and SPR Journal are available in the SPR's online library; see http://www.spr.ac.uk/ for details.